A Nation of Victims

What in God’s name is going on in the United States? Has a reverse Taliban taken over? America’s cultural mujahedin have launched a jihad over an old sacred cause, sexual harassment, all because the literary world’s answer to Paris Hilton, the preposterous self-publicist Naomi Wolf, wrote that her Yale professor Harold Bloom put his pudgy hand on her pudgier thigh 20 years ago. This drivel appeared in New York magazine, whose main function is to list restaurants and penile-enlargement medical centers. Heaven help us.

Having done nothing about it two decades ago, Wolf is now getting back by publicly humiliating a sick and distinguished man. She and New York magazine are engaging in character assassination. Had the magazine any decency, it could have run her story, reported by one of its writers, along with Yale’s and Bloom’s responses to it. Instead, it ran a long cover story consisting of nothing but Wolf’s unsupported accusations. What I found incredible was that her stomach seems peculiarly prone to upset at the best of times. She was “sick with excitement” before the prof arrived, then found herself “vomiting in shock” before his departure. Give this pest some Alka-Seltzer and hope she jumps in a freezing lake. Clearly life has been good to Wolf, but a little publicity never hurt.

When it comes to sexual harassment, the mullahs show no pity to transgressors, real or imagined. The week of the Wolf story, the New York Times ran a front-pager under the alarming headline “Military Women Reporting Rapes by U.S. Soldiers.” The hysterical tone was palpable from the start. “The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops.” What I’d like to know is what women are doing in the military in the first place.

And it gets better. Katie Hnida, a former place-kicker for the University of Colorado, recently announced that she had been sexually harassed by the team and even raped by one of her teammates. These charges came about after she had been cut by the coach, Gary Barnett. Barnett declared, no doubt truthfully, “It was obvious Katie was not very good. She was awful. You know what guys do? They respect your ability. You can be 90 years old, but if you can go out and play, they’ll respect you. Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible.” Harsh words, but unfortunately the truth is often quite harsh. For saying this, however, the university president immediately put Barnett on paid leave pending an investigation. The New York Times was not satisfied. They wanted more than just Barnett’s firing. Somebody had to “clean up the university’s mess of a football program,” shrieked an editorial. The “separate jock world” had to be eliminated once and for all. A Times sports reporter called for “something drastic … like shutting down the program to investigate the root causes of the dreadful events that have been alleged.” These priests of intolerance didn’t even bother to pretend that a woman’s accusation against a man is not the last word on the matter. What I’d like to know yet again is, what was a woman doing on a male football team? And since when is a coach fired for saying someone is a dreadful player? If the charges are proved, throw the book at the perpetrators, but not until.

Banning and eliminating comes naturally to these liberal spiritual brothers of Osama bin Laden. Our mullahs have declared a fatwa on Mel Gibson’s film. Abe Foxman is leading the jihad against the cross, just as liberal Catholic scholars are assisting in slandering the great Pope Pius XII. Personally, I find Foxman’s cries of wolf (pun intended) laughable.

The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier, refers to the Gospels as “way beyond the pale of decency.” I find Wieseltier beyond the pale. When our Lord Jesus was depicted as having sexual thoughts while dying on the cross in “The Last Temptation of Christ,” few voices were raised in protest. When some untalented pig photographed a crucifix in a jar of urine, even fewer voices were raised. Art and all that. Now that Mel Gibson has shown things the way they were, Foxman wants to censor. The neocons forced an agenda on President Bush that will most likely make him a one-term president. Their dual agenda has Uncle Sam’s interests taking second place after those of Israel. Now people like Foxman want to ban a Christian film made by a devout Catholic like Gibson. What I’d like to know is how that could happen in a Christian country.

And lastly, the New York Times did not like Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader taking part in the 2000 presidential debates. It’s Bush and Gore and no one else, according to the Times. Who do the Times think they are? The hard-liners in Iran? Tell all these American mullahs to go to hell and take their political correctness with them.